The McLaren team principal also revealed that his team talked to the Finn last year about a possible driver but that, so far, it had not approached Raikkonen over 2014. Lotus is confident its star driver will stay next year, but Raikkonen has been linked to moves to both Red Bull and Ferrari over the summer.

"Obviously Kimi is determined to go somewhere else and I sense that he will not succeed in that goal, so let's see how he gets on there," Whitmarsh said when asked by the official F1 website if he would approach Raikkonen.

He added: "Kimi has always been great and I am a big fan of him. There is a lot of speculation out there at the moment, so let's see what happens.

"I probably shouldn't be, but I'm completely open - last year we had talks with him, but for various reasons it didn't happen. This year we've had no talks - yet."